


pull back the shield between us

by ladybonehollows



Category: Green Creek Series - T.J. Klune
Genre: Angst, M/M, Missing Scene, Mistrust, and the overwhelming instinct TO trust, set during heartsong, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:07:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21731959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladybonehollows/pseuds/ladybonehollows
Summary: Robbie's trapped behind a line of silver, and there's a Bennett wolf who won't leave him alone.He's not sure he wants him to.A quiet moment between Robbie and Kelly during Heartsong.
Relationships: Kelly Bennett/Robbie Fontaine
Comments: 4
Kudos: 34





	pull back the shield between us

**Author's Note:**

> I have devoured this series in the last week, and my life is forever changed. Damn you, Sam, and thank you for my life.
> 
> This is set probably before Ox's birthday.

Sometimes the walls around me felt too close, the live of silver on the floor boxing me into this narrow space where there was no air, no room to move, no room to _be._ I paced along every inch of my prison, wishing for an extra half a stride, snarling at the walls in frustration each time I reached them. It didn’t matter that I knew that they would let me out again come morning, or that I understood why they kept me down there. They said they knew who I was, but they didn’t know _this_ me, and they couldn’t take a chance when it came to their pack.

… My pack?

 _Their_ pack.

Kelly sat with his back to the wall on the other side of the silver line, a book in his lap, while I wandered aimlessly back and forth around the basement, trailing my fingertips along the walls. I’d considered scratching a count of days into the concrete, but wasn’t sure whether the Bennetts would appreciate that. I knew that it was their prison basement and not like, their dining room or whatever, but the thought of permanently marking Elizabeth’s walls made a part of me shrink in on myself.

To make up for it, I kicked the bedframe. Halfheartedly.

Kelly didn’t react. Not that I was watching him for a response.

At other times, the room felt too large. 

Sighing heavily, I put my back to the wall and slipped down to the ground, the concrete floor hard and cool against my hands. The bed would be more comfortable. But sitting beside the line of silver made the room feel smaller.

It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that this put me closer to Kelly.

Just because I knew who he was to me — who they said he was to me — didn’t mean that _I_ felt that way. He was a stranger. A stranger who smelled _so fucking good_ —

 _— grass and lake water and… and_ sunshine —

“Do you really have nothing better to do than sit here?” I said, one part genuinely curious and three parts trying to shove down the comfort I felt to have him nearby.

Kelly was unfazed, glancing up at me with a small smile playing at his lips. “Do you really have nothing better to do than stare at me all night?”

I wasn’t blushing. I was _not_ blushing. Raising my eyebrows, I looked pointedly around the room. “Not like I have much else to do.”

When my eyes returned to Kelly, his were wide, his brow pinched. “I — I don’t know why I didn’t think of it. I can bring you some of your books, of course I can, they’re all at the other house, but I can —”

He was already on his feet, turning toward the door. My stomach dropped, and I reached out toward him before I could stop myself. “Wait,” I said, and immediately snapped my mouth shut — it wasn’t because I _wanted_ him here, it just… I sighed, shaking my head at every confusing, contradictory thing spinning inside it. “You don’t have to go now,” I said, dropping my gaze at the hope that flashed in his eyes. It wasn’t… a thing, it was just that — “It’s late. But. Tomorrow, maybe?”

Kelly’s smile was tentative, but he nodded quickly. “Okay.”

He hovered by the door for a few seconds longer, his eyes on me. I didn’t know what he saw, but when he stepped further into the room once more, he didn’t return to his place against the opposite wall. I held my breath as Kelly lowered himself onto the floor beside me, separated by one foot and a thick line of silver.

Everything on the other side of the barrier was deadened, but I could still feel the warmth of Kelly’s body, could smell the crisp scent of his shampoo beneath the more overwhelming scents, even if everything else was muffled. I inhaled slowly, feeling calm, and then frustrated _because_ I felt so calm.

“We could read this together,” Kelly offered, sticking his thumb in between the pages and turning the book so I could see the cover. _Sense and Sensibility._ “Do you… Have you read it?”

The tightness around his mouth told me that I had, in fact, read it, even though the answer on my lips was a confident _no_. Was this a thing we’d done together? Before? I felt a stirring of guilt, and knew that it would be so easy for him to be playing me, to be breaking me down with each wave of blue that washed over him.

But I also knew that no matter how much easier it would be for me to believe that, that there was nothing but honesty in the sadness radiating off of Kelly.

I didn’t want to make it worse. I didn’t know how to stop it. I shrugged noncommittally, which was all the answer he needed.

Wordlessly, he pulled his finger from his placeholder and opened the book to the front page. “You’ve read that already though,” I protested.

Kelly kept his eyes on the book for a few seconds before raising them to look at me, and there was that smile again, soft and sad and hopeful all at once. I didn’t know how he could stand this. “It’s not the first time I’ve read it. But I still like to think I learn something new every time. Sometimes you appreciate it more the second time around.”

The back of my throat was burning. “Is this a thing we did?” I asked him quietly, not trusting myself to speak louder.

“You read faster, so let me know if you pause, otherwise I’ll turn the pages once I’ve finished the page,” he said, and that was answer enough.

There wasn’t a clock down here, but I could tell that it was late from the tiredness pulling at my eyes. A few chapters in, Kelly started turning the pages more slowly. I wondered if he was starting to feel as tired as I was, but it was at least half an hour after that before he closed the book and set it in his lap. “I never used to get tired so easily,” he said, hiding a yawn behind the back of his hand.

I wanted to tell him that he didn’t have to stay up with me, but also that I didn’t want him to leave, and both of those thoughts clashed uncomfortably in my chest. So I said nothing, and continued to say nothing when Kelly shuffled forward a few feet away from the wall, paused to roll his shoulders, and then stretched out along the line of silver, his head propped up on his elbow by my knee.

The book was open between us, but he wasn’t looking at it when I lay down beside him, moving carefully so as not to burn myself on the barrier between us. He did look tired. The bags under his eyes weren’t the result of just tonight’s late hour, and there was a furrow in his brow that never seemed to go away. I wondered what he looked like before his wolf had been taken from him. I wanted to see him smile.

“I’m sorry,” I said instead. He didn’t smile, but his eyebrows lifted curiously, erasing that furrow a little. “About what Ezra… what happened to your wolf. I’m sorry.”

And it was back, for just a moment, before Kelly’s face fell. He reached over the silver, oblivious to the way that my heart jumped in the moment before his fingertips brushed my forearm. “It wasn’t you. Robbie, it’s not your fault.”

If he hadn’t been gone, if they hadn’t all come to find him, if…

“Okay,” I whispered. “Okay.”

Kelly looked up at me like he didn’t believe me, which was fine, because I didn’t believe him either.

Sighing quietly, he dropped his left arm to the floor and rested his head on his forearm. His other hand was still on my arm, and it remained there for a moment, his skin warm on mine, before trailing lightly down my arm until his hand dropped to lay flat on the floor between us. On my side of the silver line.

It wasn’t until I felt the cold floor underneath my arm, my glasses forced askew as my head rested on my forearm, that I realised I was mirroring him. “Do you want to read some more?” Kelly asked.

I shrugged. “If you want.”

Kelly didn’t move.

Neither did I.

The silence that stretched out between us should have been awkward, and the lack of it was a warmth that sat more and more heavily on my chest with every moment. It wasn’t until the layers of Kelly’s armour started to strip away that I realised that he’d been clinging to one, and the way he looked at me... like he couldn’t believe I was here, like I was going to disappear any second.

Like he missed me so deeply that he was drowning in it, even though there were only inches between us.

Who was I, who pulled such a strong emotion from him, who made him feel so blue blue blue? I wanted to fix it, to make him better, to make him happy, to tear to pieces anyone and anything that threatened to make him feel anything close to the way he felt right now.

It felt like the truest thing I’d known in weeks, and that terrified me.

My hand shifted before I could stop it, sliding two inches across the floor until my little finger brushed Kelly’s. His hand remained still, but I saw his throat bob as he swallowed, his eyes shining.

We must have fell asleep. I remembered closing my tired eyes for a while, and then opening to find Kelly’s closed, and then seeing Kelly’s blink open, his body tensing momentarily before his eyes landed on me and he relaxed again.

At some point, both of us must have fallen asleep properly, because I woke with a rush, the world snapping into sharp focus around me and making me immediate alert. I could hear Kelly’s heartbeat, slow and sure, was hit by his powerfully steadying scent. Beyond that, I could hear the even breathing of half a dozen wolves sleeping upstairs, the quiet creaks of the old house, the breeze in the trees outside.

I inhaled deeply, filling myself up with freedom and nature and _Kelly_.

I looked down at our hands, my chest tightening to see mine wrapped loosely around Kelly’s, and more so when I saw how his wrist had disturbed the silver, creating just enough of a gap in the line to break the barrier. It would be an awkward reach to step over him, but I knew I could manage it, could do it quietly enough that his human ears wouldn’t hear me. I could be out of the basement, out of the house before anyone could stop me, and by the time I tripped Gordo’s wards around the town, I’d have a strong enough head start that they might not catch me. Even if they followed me all the way to Caswell, as long as I got their first then it would be enough, I would be safe, I could do it, I could go home.

 _Home_. What a fucking mockery.

Caswell wasn’t home. Not in the way that I wanted it to be. Not in the way that I’d thought. This place wasn’t either, no matter how much these people thought it was, thought it should be. But… but the pack’s trust, Ox’s trust… _Kelly’s_ trust… those were the things that my heart ached for most in that moment. I could see Ox’s disappointment, Kelly’s hurt, swimming in front of my eyes when they found out that I’d gone.

I didn’t want to let them down.

They thought I was something. That I belonged here. I didn’t.

What if I could?

That thought was too terrifying to contemplate.

So I didn’t. I didn’t think about it at all as I lifted Kelly’s hand gently, using his fingers to push the silver back into place. The barrier sprung up between us, shutting off my greater awareness of the world beyond, and I sighed, lonely and adrift.

But Kelly’s grip shifted in his sleep, intertwining his fingers with mine, and the calm that started to seep through me was immediate. It should have scared me more.

I was tired of being scared. I stroked my thumb across the back of Kelly’s hand, the skin soft and warm under the pad of my thumb. And… this was okay.

For right now, this was okay.


End file.
